VICTORIA — For the first time in a long and secretive history, the all-party committee in charge of managing the affairs of the B.C. legislature is scheduled to meet publicly in the provincial capital Tuesday.

Observers, including news media representatives, welcome to attend. Hansard recording the proceedings for those unable to make it for a long-overdue moment in open government.

The six-member legislative assembly management committee (LAMC), which has been around in various configurations for 25 years, decided late last month to let the sun shine in at its next meeting.

Or rather it was shamed into doing so by a devastating report from Auditor-General John Doyle, who documented the lack of proper controls over the assembly’s $70-million annual budget and his own five-year struggle to get those in charge to fix the problem.

With the committee having also decided to accept Doyle’s recommendations, there’s some thought that the opening of its meetings may turn out to be somewhat anticlimactic news-wise.

But I doubt that will be the case with the one scheduled for late next month, when his scrappy-ness himself, auditor-general Doyle, is scheduled to make an appearance to defend his findings.

Tuesday’s proceedings are also expected to take up another lingering controversy arising out of the Doyle report, namely the role played by the office of the clerk of the legislature.

The auditor-general spread the blame around for the lapses documented in his report to include the committee as well as the offices of the Speaker and the office of the clerk.

The committee, as noted above, has moved to clean up its act. Speaker Bill Barisoff, duly chastised, has recently announced that he will not seek re-election, though he was already contemplating that course before the Doyle report came out.

The clerk through most of the time when Doyle was auditing the assembly was George MacMinn.

He is one of the most respected figures in the 140-year history of the provincial assembly and the longest-serving legislative clerk anywhere in the British Commonwealth.

As an authority on parliamentary procedures here in B.C., he has no equal. He literally wrote the book on it: Parliamentary Practice in B.C., now in its fourth authoritative edition.

But as the senior clerk, he was also the administrative overseer of operations for the assembly, including the chamber, Hansard services, security, the library, the gift shop, and, ahem, the keeping of the accounts through the office of the legislative comptroller.

While there is plenty of blame to go around on this issue — I fault the Speaker and both parties for lack of due diligence, first and foremost — the fact remains that Doyle’s repeated warnings went unheeded for the most part on MacMinn’s watch.

His concern, from all appearances, was to preserve the assembly’s hard-won independence. But to what end? The question arises from a report on the controversy regarding the legislature accounts that was commissioned by MacMinn’s successor as clerk of the assembly, Craig James.

“Independence must be preserved,” wrote accountant Arn van Iersel, himself a former provincial auditor-general. “But at the same time it has to be seen that the office of the clerk reports to and works for the legislative assembly as a whole — not as an office unto itself.”

He also warned that in the public realm, there were other risks to the assembly’s reputation besides the loss of independence.

“There is a risk of a loss of public confidence in the operations of the assembly and its members,” he wrote, taking note of the fiscal shenanigans that brought disrepute to the mother of parliaments in the United Kingdom as well as to the legislatures in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

“A series of financial indiscretions can raise questions about the overall integrity of the legislature,” said van Iersel in the report delivered last fall and released this summer. “It is extremely important therefore for the assembly to have a well functioning internal control system ... including well-developed oversight by the committee as well as periodic audits.”

The office of the clerk cannot operate as an office unto itself. Without proper oversight and periodic audits, the assembly risks its standing with the public. It is hard not to interpret those comments as a verdict on the goings-on at the B.C. legislature.

MacMinn retired a year ago after more than 50 years ago at the clerk’s table, to be replaced by Craig James.

But the octogenarian former clerk remains on contract to the assembly as a consultant until September 2013 at the not-inconsiderable fee of $240,000 a year, as disclosed earlier this month by reporter Rob Shaw of the Victoria Times Colonist.

Severance or not, the continuing payout to MacMinn has proved to be too much for the New Democrats.

“I’m disappointed he’s still being employed by the legislature,” declared NDP house leader John Horgan, strongly suggesting that the clerk consultant should leave altogether in the wake of Doyle’s damning report.

Attempts to persuade MacMinn to go quietly have to date failed. As the day ended Monday, Horgan was planning to raise the issue at LAMC, ensuring that its first public meeting will not lack for controversy.

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